Police-press relations turn the air blue

Mar 13 2009 by Richard McComb, Birmingham Post

Police and press once worked to their mutual

benefit. Not any more, says Richard McComb

Turning the air blue

The police and the press – they are not natural bedfellows.

A healthy mutual suspicion has always coloured relations although there was a time when a feeling of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” existed between the two organisations.

It was not unknown for officers to give unattributable briefings to trusted hacks as the minutes ticked down to deadline, particularly if this happened to aid their investigation and personal prestige. The tactic secured bylined scoops for reporters and helped to nail some extremely unpleasant criminals.

If a journalist transgressed the rules of the game, the offender soon found himself robbed of his only meaningful currency – information. If you are a crime reporter and you don’t have access to the inside track, it is only a matter of time before the news editor comes calling and delivers those fateful words: “We think you’d make a good sub-editor.”

I was once The Post’s home affairs correspondent – the posh term for a crime reporter – and lived in fear of the post-news conference tap on the shoulder.

Times have changed. In truth, they changed many years ago. The rising power and influence of police communications departments and the triumph of presentation over substance has been a menace to the dissemination of valuable, i e newsworthy, information.

Sure, you’ll find out if a local police unit has “cracked down on neighbourhood drug barons” but not the fact that the hustlers and dealers have moved their campaign of intimidation to the next-door estate.

Press officers love being “proactive,” nor least because when they are pro-active, their “team leader” is tickled pink and can tick a performance monitoring box that records “proactive actions.” Armed with this fascinating information, all manner of charts and graphs can be constructed to dazzle the gullible. It doesn’t matter that the subject of the proactive action – usually a press release – is dull, just that it is proactive.

However, when press officers have to be “reactive” – that is, answer an unexpected request from a journalist – they generally do two things: first, they get highly suspicious about the reason for the request. Secondly, they stall.

Some don’t bother to do anything. In the last two to three weeks, I have called the press office of a major force, left requests and nobody bothered to call me back. Rude? Inefficient?

I’d name names but it would probably spark an internal investigation, which would be funded, as usual, by the taxpayer, which really is throwing good money after bad.

It is for this reason I celebrate the fact that requests to West Midlands Police under the Freedom of Information Act continue to rise.

During 2005, 830 Freedom of Information Act requests were made to the force – a figure which rose to 1,052 in 2008. The force, the country’s second-biggest, now receives about four inquiries each working day.

According to a report by Chief Constable Sir Paul Scott-Lee, there is “significant media interest in the integrity/attendance of police officers.” Presumably, this is a good thing, as one would hope Sir Paul and his senior team are also concerned by such matters.

Thus it is that Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have asked for all sorts of tricky details, matters that ordinarily would be dropped into an encrypted computer file at Force Headquarters at Lloyd House in Birmingham and kept away from the public gaze.

Requests have delved into police officers’ criminal convictions; the number of officers suspended and/or arrested; the number of officers failing drug tests; the number of days lost to sickness absence; and the number of officers and staff committing motoring offences.

Reporters have also sought to find out about assaults on officers by members of the public. This is an odd one as this is one of the few snippets of information police forces usually have readily to hand – and with good reason, for thugs who attack the police deserve everything they get.

Other FOI questions have addressed “special priority payments” and details of the chief officer’s bonus scheme, which one hopes is related to the detection rate, a nugget of information you will have a devil of a time tracking down on West Midlands Police’s whizzy new website. The rate, incidentally, stands at almost 29 per cent. A press officer was able to tell me this. The clear-up rate is higher than I recall from my days tracking the force, but still means more than 70 per cent of villains are getting away with it.

Sir Paul’s update on the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act was considered by the police authority’s finance and resources committee this week. It points out that topical news reports will “often lead to a flood of requests around the same issue.”

So it is that the force’s FOI team has been asked about the details of murder victims aged under 18; statistics on gun/knife crime; and details about crimes committed in or around schools and hospitals. There have also been some less grave FOI inquiries – such as the number of times West Midlands Police vehicles have been filled with the wrong type of fuel and the cost of “cardboard cut-out officers.”

The answer to the latter is £10,000, which was the most spent by any force in the country on so-called Flatpack Pcs. These life-sized cardboard cops were used for recruitment purposes but were also deployed as a “crime prevention measure to deter offending.” Facts and figures are scanty when it comes to the validity of the deterrent effect but it is claimed thefts of cars plummeted when an Ikea Plod was erected near a car park. Whether the sight of the burly bobby put off would-be joyriders or the crooks couldn’t hot-wire the cars for laughing is not recorded.

Sir Paul’s report, an object lesson in restrained diplomacy, also provides details of the “type of requester” posting FOI queries. Almost half of the 758 people asking for information in 2008 were members of the public (47 per cent). The press, including news agencies, comprised more than a third (37 per cent) and the rest of the applications were submitted by organisations, companies and members of West Midlands Police who found their own force to be less than forthcoming with information.

“Members of Parliament and some local government officials are making increasing use of the Act to obtain information both on behalf of their constituents and in support of party political objectives,” adds Sir Paul.

The fact that journalists account for such a large chunk of requests comes as no surprise. The intractable rise and rise of the police spin-doctor means a climate of fear and paranoia pervades police/press relations. All inquiries have to go through the “comms” department, all statements have to be vetted. Wrists are slapped for speaking out of turn. Bureaucracies and ironies abound.

In a world without the Freedom of Information Act, I have no doubt that if a journalist contacted West Midlands Police with any requests about officers’ conduct and integrity (as outlined above) they would be met with the same succinct answer: Can’t tell you. Why? Because that’s the way it is – force policy.

I am not blaming the press officers, who are only working within the rules. It is the policy wonks who are at fault, individuals who are obsessed with image and pay more attention to the force’s “cross-gender inclusiveness strategy” than the crime rate.

I asked West Midlands Police press office to provide the annual cost of the police press office. These people are publicly accountable and I contribute to their wages. The figure must be in an annual report, I said.

I was told the information wasn’t available. Sorry. Perhaps I could submit a Freedom of Information request?

It’s like being in a Kafka novel.